Friday, February 13, 2015

[Hormel] Home-style Chicken Breast and Mashed Potatoes

 The fact that has been sitting in my dorm’s vending machine for months should have been a red flag. But I mean… How bad could it be, right?

The packaging seemed decent. The picture of nice, moist chicken breast, on top of smooth and creamy mashed potatoes, glistening with flavorful gravy, promised me a filling and delicious dinner. Little did I know, this was about to be one of the most disgusting things I ever put in my mouth.

Printed on the bottom were the standard microwaving instructions I’ve grown more accustomed to than I am willing to accept. The familiar feeling from reading the instructions reassured my false confidence that this was going to taste good. After all, most of the ramen and microwavable food I cooked tasted just fine.

I opened the packaging, excited by the delightful dinner I was going to have. I followed the instructions; poked holes on the rapper and microwaved it. I must admit, the smell definitely made me doubt my excitement. It was appalling. I couldn’t quite name what it smelled like. Perhaps it smelled like chicken that’s gone bad, or perhaps it smelled like sweat, but it wasn’t a pleasant smell.

I opened the rapper, only to realize that I had fallen victim to a horribly misleading marketing scheme. The food looked nothing like the picture on the package; the color was dreadful. Was this even real chicken? It seemed like a rubbery piece of flop on top of soggy and weird looking goo.  The explosion of the repulsive smell immediately signaled me that this wasn’t something I should be putting into my mouth. Despite my roommate and my brain deploring me to just throw it away, I pushed myself to take a bite. I had decided to write a review, and I wasn’t going to write a review without at least tasting the food. 

Eww.. Just.. Ew...

The disgusting metallic and salty taste of the gravy coupled with the dryness of the chicken made the first bite extremely difficult to swallow. The potatoes were grainy and completely flavorless. This was definitely one of the top 5 grossest thing I’ve had to put into my mouth. For the love of god, this tasted worse than the treats my dog eats (and yes, I’ve tasted my dog’s treats).
I did end up finishing all of the disgusting mixture of what tasted like a soup of gooey sand and overcooked piece of old chicken.

Overall, I would be comfortable with rating this the second most disgusting things I’ve ever had to taste (the first is a foie gras I had to eat on an airplane, which I threw up almost instantly after putting into my mouth).

The packaging is misleading, as the content of the product does not deliver the promised home-style dinner as portrayed on the package. I would not recommend this to any
one, except those who have been starving for a month with no alternative but this, or those who completely neglected to do their composition assignment, and was left with no choice but to write about something they could find in their dormitory building.